THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 281 



Mr. A. W. Hanham (Canad. Entom., 1914, p. 145) has shown 

 that in British Columbia sunflowers are especially visited by species 

 of Pliisia and related genera. Records from other localities suggest 

 that much the same thing may be observed elsewhere, though no 

 other collector has taken the trouble to make a careful list. At 

 Boulder, Colorado, Sept. 2, 1914, in bright sunshine, I found 

 Caloplusia ignea (Grote) visiting the fiowers of Helianthits lenticu- 

 lar is. Also at Boulder, July 31, I collected Plusia (or Syngrapha) 

 falcifera Kirby (simplex Gn.) at flowers of annual garden //f/iaw//zi^5. 

 Three specimens were taken. 



During the season of 1914, the one really serious pest of our 

 red sunflowers (varieties of Helianthus anmms) was the common 

 Nysius. These insects assembled in numbers on the flower-stalks, 

 and caused the heads to wilt and die. They seemed to be princip- 

 ally injurious on plants the heads of which had been bagged for 

 cross-pollination, multitudes of them collecting just below the bag, 

 and by their combined attack destroying the head Although this 

 is a very common insect, its name is not settled beyond doubt. 

 Formerly, following Van Duzee and others, it was labelled N. 

 angnstatiis; but according to Horvath this is a synonym of N. ericce 

 Schill. Professor C. P. Gillette writes, however, that the common 

 Colorado species is now to be referred to N. minutus Uhler. He 

 even doubts whether true angustatus occurs in Colorado. Dr. 

 Van Duzee writes that formerly he considered minutus a synonym 

 of angustatus, but he now treats it as a distinct variety of ericcB 

 or angustatus. At La Jolla, California, he finds that all the 

 specimens are minutus; but in Kansas and elsewhere in the Missis- 

 sippi Valley he found angustatus the commoner form. It appears, 

 from all this, that we should call our Boulder pest Nysius erica 

 minutus. 



Dr. S. A. Forbes, in Rept. 111. State Entomologist for 1913 

 and 1914 (1915), p. 4, refers to the sunflower weevil, "an insect 

 new to agriculture which has led to the virtual abandonment of 

 the growing of sunflower seed for oil." Dr. Forbes does not 

 mention the scientific name of the weevil, but in a letter he kindly 

 informs me that it is Smicronyx fulvus. Now, this 5. (or Desmoris) 

 fulvus Lee. is very common on the sunflowers at Boulder, but we 

 have not found it a serious pest. There are two Torymine Chalcids, 



